


Xylem

by Scarlet



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Tree, Gen, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1775449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scarlet/pseuds/Scarlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder and Scully and pretty, pretty Christmas trees...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Xylem

**Author's Note:**

> TIMELINE: Season 1 up to but not including Beyond The Sea.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17th 1993  
HOOVER BUIDING

“Scully, I can see my breath,” Mulder calls out over his shoulder, his office keys still dangling from his index finger.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Scully groans, following him into his office. She exhales sharply and watches the transient fog of her breath billow upwards.

“Welcome back to Icy Cape,” Mulder proffers with a flourish, pocketing his keys.

Scully shoots him a quick sideways glance, the memory of holding him at gun point last month is still too fresh in her mind for her to joke about it.

She sets her briefcase on his desk.

“Great. How soon can we get it fixed?”

Mulder scratches his freshly shaven chin. “I can make calls, but we’ll be lucky if we can get a HVAC maintenance team down here by Monday.”

There’s no way they can work here. She tells him so.

Mulder nods. “Time for plan B. My place or yours?”

“Yours is closer,” she replies, adjusting her gloves before grabbing her briefcase again.

“My my, Agent Scully, you know where I live?” he asks, moving closer.

“It’s in your file,” she replies, turning away and heading for the door.

“You have a file on me?” he shouts after her.

“I’m a spy, remember?” she shouts back.

***  
2630 HEGAL PLACE  
ALEXANDRIA

“This is not quite what I was expecting,” Scully comments, minutes after crossing the threshold of apartment 42.

“And what exactly were you expecting?” Mulder asks, hanging both their coats on the stand.

“Hm, I guess I thought it would be more like… an extension of your office, somehow. I mean, this is pretty void of your usual... clutter.”

“Don’t go into the bedroom,” he laughs. “Tea or coffee?”

“Coffee, thanks.”

She watches him disappear into his small kitchen.

“Aw, Mulder, you have pets.” Scully says fondly, peering down at the fish tank in his living room.

A few minutes later, Mulder comes back holding two steaming mugs. “Do fish qualify as pets? You can’t really ‘pet’ them.”

“A pet is any animal you keep for companionship, Mulder.”

“I finally have a definition for Frohike,” he mutters, setting the two mugs on his coffee table and inviting her to sit down. He then goes to crank the thermostat up.

“Who’s Frohike?”

“Nobody.”

She gives him a look but does not insist. There are many things Mulder does not tell her. Still, after the few weird cases she’s experienced with him, she can’t say she blames him for being cagey. She knows earning his trust will take a while. She’s fine with that.

Mulder drops heavily on the couch next to her. He rummages in the black leather pouch he brought from the office and produces a file. “You’re gonna love this one, partner.”

Scully leafs through the papers briefly, then sets the file squarely on her knees. Her wilful chin juts out. “Haunted Christmas Tree Farm? Seriously, Mulder?”

He bats his eyelashes at her. “Please Scully, in the spirit of the season?”

She wants to laugh but doesn’t. This man charms and irritates her in equal amounts, but she’ll be caught dead before letting him know about the former. She purses her lips and keeps reading.

“Mulder, just because trees are dying doesn’t mean the place is invaded by evil disgruntled elves.”

“The trees died in a perfect CIRCLE Scully.”

“So what? Maybe somebody buried toxic waste in the soil, and trees won’t grow there.”

“They were growing just fine until this year.”

“That doesn’t make it a case.”

“People have seen strange lights around them.”

“They’re called Christmas lights, Mulder. My dad is bringing me a box full of them on Sunday; I’ll show them to you.”

Mulder nudges her knee with his. “Come on, Scully, what do you have to lose?”

“Another weekend?”

“I’ll buy you a Christmas tree.”

“Oh, so now you want to bribe me with cursed conifers?”

“Not a bribe Scully, more like a token of goodwill.”

She takes a sip from her mug. His coffee could raise the dead. Of course she’s too polite to say so, and besides, he might drag her to the nearest cemetery to test her theory if she did. “Come on, Mulder, admit it, you have very little to go on for this to be a legitimate X-file.”

“A legitimate X-File? Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

She rolls her eyes. “Name one good reason, why I should follow you on this wild goose chase to -- ” she searches through the papers, “Moose Apple Christmas Tree farm in Berryville.”  
  
He leans closer. “To prove me wrong, Scully,” he whispers, his breath warm against her cheek.

She’s not sure what to make of the sudden shiver running down her spine. In any case she tamps it down hard.

“Let me read, Mulder,” she snaps at him.

He slumps back on the couch, a satisfied smirk playing on his lips. He drinks his coffee slowly while she finishes the file.

“The fish belonged to Samantha,” he says after a while.

Scully lifts her head to stare up at him, unsure how to acknowledge the information.

“Not these ones, of course,” he continues, “but after she was gone, my father took the tank into my bedroom and declared they were my responsibility from now on.” He chews on a hangnail, staring vacantly at the framed lithograph on the opposite wall. “I didn’t want them at first, but then I got used to having them around. I’ve kept fish ever since.”

Scully drops the papers on her lap and not for the first time, wishes she were more spontaneous, that she could find the right words to let him know how touched she is having him open up to her; even in such a small way. But she’s just not wired that way. She holds his gaze though, hoping to convey with her eyes what her voice can’t.

“What are they called?” she asks tilting her head towards the fish tank.

Mulder shrugs. “Fish.”

***  
SATURDAY, DECEMBER18th.  
MOOSE APPLE CHRISTMAS TREE FARM.  
NORTHERN VIRGINIA

Scully brings a latex clad finger to her nose. “Come and smell this Mulder.”

“Do I have to?” Mulder asks, reluctantly lowering his head towards her extended hand.

Around them, the sad brown desiccated branches of dying Douglas Firs fail to offer protection against the biting December wind. The sun, a misshapen hazy glow, barely indents a discernible print in the silvery grey sky.

“Don’t you smell fungi?” Scully asks him, a patch of old snow crunching under her boot.

“Maybe, I mostly smell resin to be honest. Why?”

“Foxfire, Mulder. This would explain your strange lights as well as the state of these trees: bioluminescent wood decaying fungi.”

“Foxfire, uh?” He graces her with an impish grin before circling the nearest tree, scrutinizing its bark while whistling The Doors' "Light my Fire". Scully smirks. His humor is becoming quite predictable now.

“I have to say I quite like your idea of a glow-in-the-dark tree eating mushroom, Scully,” Mulder concedes eventually, examining the tip of a branch.

“The oxidative enzyme responsible for the luminescence is called Luciferase,” Scully explains. Mulder snaps his head towards her, but Scully lifts a hand before he can speak up, “No, Mulder. These trees are not possessed by the devil. In this instance--”

“Lucifer means ‘light bearer”, he finishes for her , “which is why Lucifer is also referred to as the Morning Star in the Bible.”

She smiles at him. “I’m impressed, Mulder.”

He returns her smile, “You should be, considering I didn’t even go to Sunday school," he taps the nearest tree with a gloved fist, "if any of those tree performs a 360 degrees rotation we’re in trouble though.”

She’s not sure where he stands on religion. They haven’t discussed it, but if the few sarcastic comments she already heard from him are anything to go by, it seems he has little respect for organized religion. Does he know she’s a regular Church goer? And since when has his opinion on her beliefs become something she cares about, she chides herself.

Working with him is like walking on a rope bridge. She has to guess where to put her weight and where to hold it back.

She hasn’t fallen through yet, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t. She finds herself working mostly on instinct these days and this is not something she’s used to or comfortable with.

“It still doesn’t explain the circle thing,” Mulder points out, prodding a root with the tip of his shoe.

He’s right. The affected trees seem to be contained within a fifty yards radius. Mr. Grant, the farm owner, told them earlier he’d even used a Geiger counter to check for radiation levels. Mulder had beamed at him like he’d found his long lost cousin.

Scully kneels down, uncapping the lid of a test tube to take a soil sample. “Maybe the fungi attacked the roots and spread in a concentric fashion.”

“Are you saying these mushrooms know how to calculate Pi?”

Scully smirks, “they could very well be. Fungal mats are supposed to be the largest biological entities on the planet, with a structure very similar to neural networks. Some fungal individuals can cover more than 20,000 acres and they can be more than two thousand years old.”

“Let’s hope they’re pacifists,” Mulder comments, frowning at the ground under his feet.

“And vegetarian,” Scully adds, making Mulder chuckle. She pockets her soil sample and rubs her freezing hands over her arms. The air she breathes is sharp and metallic. More snow is on its way. “I’m cold. Let’s go home, Mulder.”

He hands her his car keys. “You go ahead, I want to stay and wait for the night. I gotta check out those lights.”

Scully sighs, accepting the keys and dipping her chin. "Of course you would." She touches his arm lightly. “How will you get home?”

He shrugs. “Shouldn’t be a problem, it’s flying reindeer season.”

Scully looks up at the crown of the Christmas trees swaying lightly in the wind. “Call me if you get stuck,” she tells him before heading back to the parking lot.

***  
SUNDAY, DECEMBER19th  
3170 W. 53 RD  
ANNAPOLIS  
2PM

“Are you sure mom won’t need any of these?” Scully asks her father while inspecting the contents of the cardboard box he just set on her kitchen table.

“I doubt it,” her father replies gruffly. “She’s got three more boxes just like this one in the attic, and I told her she’s only allowed one Christmas tree.”

“You run a tight ship, Ahab,” Scully tells him, smiling and holding a blue glass bauble under the light.

Her father shoves his hands in his pockets. “You know, if I let her, we would end up with a life size replica of Santa’s grotto in the backyard.”

“Oh, come on, she’s not that bad.” Scully unwraps an angel from its protective bundle of silk paper.

“Oh, she is,” her father scoffs. “Honestly I don’t know what it is with you women and the need to fill the house with useless trinkets and knick-knacks every time there’s a celebration of some kind.” He casts a look towards her living room before adding: “I’m surprised you haven’t bought your Christmas tree yet.”

Scully sets the angel on the table and rummages in the box again. “I was going to get one this weekend but I got sidetracked.”

“Your work again, uh?”

Scully knows that tone.

“Yes, dad, my work,” she replies, her voice firm and clipped, sharp as a ten blade.

Their conversation can only go one of two ways now. They both know it. Scully remains silent, unwrapping her Christmas decorations one by one.

“Where do you get your Christmas tree from?” her father asks eventually.

Scully releases the wad of silk paper she’d unconsciously kept crumpled in her fist.

“I usually get it from my church. The Scouts have a stand there.”

Bill Scully picks up a papier-maché ginger bread man, slips the golden loop around his finger and makes it twirl. “Your mother...” he begins.

The doorbell interrupts him.

“Excuse me,” his daughter says, leaving him in the kitchen.

Upon opening her front door, Scully finds herself greeted by the broad green branches of a Christmas tree.

“I am not a bribe and I’m only mildly haunted,” the tree says in a falsetto voice.

“Oh, Mulder, you really didn’t have to.” Scully says, stepping aside to let him in, not even trying to hide her wide smile this time when he winks at her in reply. She shows him where to set the tree down. “Any luck last night?” she asks after having thanked him.

Mulder shakes his head, rubbing off a smear of resin from his thumb, “Nah, I didn’t see a thing. Mind you, I didn’t stay very long after nightfall, it was too damn cold. I’m planning to go back there with adequate gear. Farmer Grant doesn’t buy your mushroom theory by the way. He says the lights he saw were more like hovering Northern Lights.”

“I’m sure it is better for Mr. Grant’s business to have ghostly lights shining in his trees rather than have them blighted by a fungus,” she points out.

“You should have a little more faith in people, Scully.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear that coming from you.”

“Aren’t you going to introduce me, Dana?” her father asks, entering the living room with purpose.

Scully turns towards him, blushing slightly. “Of course I am. Dad, this is my partner, Fox Mulder. Mulder, meet my father, Captain William Scully.”

Bill Scully raises an eyebrow at such a weird first name - his parents must have been hippies, he decides. The two men shake hands.

“Have you been in the FBI long, Mr. Mulder?” William Scully asks.

“Eight years, Sir.”

“Mulder used to work for the Behavioral Science Unit,” Scully tells her father. “He was one of their top profiler.”

Mulder tries to catch Scully’s eyes. She deliberately avoids his.

“Then maybe you can tell me Mr. Mulder, what makes a bright young woman such as my daughter give up a promising career in medicine to go hunt down the dregs of society instead?”

“Dad!”

“Because someone has to?” Mulder ventures.

Bill Scully scoffs. “That’s all you’ve got, son? I’m not impressed.”

“Actually, I’ve got a lot more, Sir, but I work with your daughter every day and I’d rather not impress you than piss her off.”

Mulder’s New England arrogance is dripping from every syllable he utters. The captain’s eyes are narrowing and Scully feels her neck shrink between her shoulder blades. She catches her father’s arm, steering him towards the hallway.

“Right. Thank mom for the box, daddy. And tell her I’ve already planned dessert for Christmas, so there’s no need for her to make anything else.”

“Are you kicking me out, Dana?” her father asks as she hands him his coat.

“Yes, I am.” Her voice drops to a low hiss. “You can disapprove of my choices all you want, but I will not have you humiliate me in front of my colleagues.”

“I wasn’t...”

“Yes, you were, dad.”

Her father puts his coat on. “That partner of yours sounds like one smug son of a bitch. I don’t like him,” he grumbles.

Scully shrugs. “Not many people do.” She opens the front door to let him out.

“You’re only as good as the company you keep, Starbuck,” he warns her on the threshold.

“Then I’ll be fine, dad.”

She kisses her father goodbye and closes the door.

***  
MIDNIGHT

The muffled chimes of faraway church bells echo faintly in the distance. Within the semi darkness of the living room, something blossoms from the depth of Scully’s Christmas tree. Multicolored drapes of soft, mother-of-pearl light appear.

They curl and dance around the branches for a while; ever shifting, translucent, unsubstantial as a dreamt mist.

Then they vanish.

A needle falls from the tree.

 

The End.

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS:  
> to chinapatterns for ace turbo beta.
> 
> STORY BACKGROUND:
> 
> originally written for the 2010 [LiveJournal XF Santa gift exchange](http://xf-santa.livejournal.com/).
> 
> Xylem is a type of tissue that transports water and nutrients through a plant. The best known xylem is wood. Since this story deals with the budding partnership between Mulder and Scully and how they nurture their own peculiar relationship, I thought it was a fitting title.
> 
> There is indeed a Moose Apple Tree farm in Berryville, Northern Virginia.
> 
> Mulder whistles “Light My Fire,” of course.


End file.
